Give Kamala Harris credit for integrityBy Tim Redmond
The San Francisco district attorney is running for attorney general. Statewide candidates, especially Democrats, tend to get hammered as "soft on crime" if they so much as utter of word against locking up more prisoners and killing more murderers.
So on the surface, it doesn't make much political sense for Kamala Harris to announce that she won't seek the death penalty in a high-profile (and particularly nasty) murder.
She still insists that, while she personally opposes the death penalty, she looks at every case individually. But right now, she's doing the right thing, and refusing to go against what she knows is the right position on the issue. And she's going to take some political heat for it.
In the end, though, it's not going to cost her the job. If anything, in a race and a season when everyone is going to be pandering and trying to make cheap political points, she's going to look good.
At least I hope so.
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Comments (5)
In a state where 60% of the people voted for prop 187 and something like 60% depending on the poll are for the death penalty, all I have to say to that analysis is I can't stop laughing.
Posted by glen matlock | September 11, 2009 05:45 PM
Actually, the most recent CA poll shows that 66% of Californians prefer the sentence of permanent imprisonment with work and restitution to the victims' family, over the death penalty. That's exactly the sentence DA Harris is pursuing in this case, which means 2 out of 3 Californians would agree she is doing the right thing, if they are told the facts.
Posted by Natasha Minsker | September 12, 2009 03:15 PM
Progressive credibility wanes and wanes, making reality as they march along along past reality.
actually
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-death-penalty2-2009sep02,0,3526424.story
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Californians' support for death penalty waning
A survey shows public support has dropped from 79% to 66%, as fears of executing the wrongly convicted escalate.
By Carol J. Williams
September 2, 2009
A majority of Californians still favor the death penalty, but their support has waned from 79% to 66% over the last two decades as fears of executing the wrongly convicted escalate, a researcher reported Tuesday.
The survey conducted by Craig Haney, a UC Santa Cruz psychology professor and lawyer, also showed that most Californians erroneously believe that it costs taxpayers less to execute condemned prisoners than to keep them locked up for life.
...
Posted by glen matlock | September 13, 2009 03:20 AM
I think Natasha's point is that if you ask the question, do you favor the death penalty, people say yes -- but if you ask, Do you support life without parole, with work and restitution, as an alternative to death in some capital crimes, people also say yes.
Posted by tim redmond | September 13, 2009 08:00 PM
I'm pretty indifferent towards the subject in the abstract, which I think is very common, but then I see a piece of shit like Edwin Ramos and wonder "why he is alive" and I am all for the death penalty.
All any republican who runs against our do nothing DA has to is to put up that picture of Ramos smiling that the Chronicle uses, and then mention that progressives like her treat citizens like lab rats to be killed and raped by criminals.
Posted by glen matlock | September 13, 2009 10:13 PM